I don’t mean that stimuli, you dirty-minded folks.
Inspired by neisha’s thread about her son, I thought I’d ask how much auditory and visual stimulation distracts you.
Me, hardly ever, and I credit that to my elementary schools. I was in grade school during the 70s, when it was fashionable (at least in Florida) to have one huge open area divided into four or five classrooms. Think a room the size of a 3/4 gym, with teacher in each corner and desks facing the teachers. No dividing walls, and bathrooms on each side. There was an open area in the middle, where they would show movies and film strips. The acoustics were a lot quieter than a gym, lest you think we were in some echoing cavern.
So, I naturally learned to tune things out. I had to, to pay attention to the teacher and learn my lessons. At work, I’m in a cubicle area, so in order to focus on my work, I tune out conversations and ringing phones. In fact, I did not know the man in the office behind me had been fired until about three months after the fact, because I hardly ever listened to conversations around me (unless they were unusually loud, in which case I couldn’t help it.)
People have to come up and almost get in my face before I realize they need me.
The only time I need quiet is when I’m trying to go to sleep.
Generally, I can block things out, but there are a few things that drive me completely batshit and can’t be ignored. Among them are ice-chewing, gum-snapping, nail clipping, and food/drink slurping. I have to turn off the car radio if there is a commercial involving noisy ingestion of any kind.
I grew up in a house with two younger, very vociferous sisters, and quite often many extra kids running around. I can tune out pretty much anything. In fact, I prefer to do work with music on/in front of the tv.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, was an only child and spent his childhood in parochial school (which I can only imagine is usually a quieter setting than my hyperactive public school classes). He can’t do anything with any extra noise. I mean, it’s not as bad as the thread about neisha’s son, but he can’t do homework if my roommate and I are talking in the room.
Ridiculously sensitive. I have worked at call centres (hundreds of people on the phone in one large room) and managed to tolerate it because the headset would cover one ear and I’d put an ear plug in the other, and they all had white noise machines. I still wanted to throttle my co-workers on occasion for carrying on loud personal conversations.
I can’t sleep without white noise, earplugs, complete darkness and a cold room. I can’t tolerate tags on clothing. Although my hearing is actually poor, I find most sound to be too loud. I have 20 watt bulbs in my lamps and find them bright.
I’m an only child, and my house was always reasonably quiet when I was growing up. I’ve also got insomniacal tendencies, have done ever since I was a baby, my mother tells me. Now I have to wear ear-plugs when I sleep, otherwise the noises that most other people don’t get bothered by - distant traffic noises, the noise of the fan on a hot night, the sound of my dad snoring that is audible through two closed doors - would drive me crazy.
Any repetitious noise gets to me when I’m trying to concentrate on something. If I spend all day in a noisy environment, I will start to get crabby, and will need to come home, or go for a walk somewhere, to luxuriate in the quiet.
I need white noise to concentrate, In general, my concentration is like a laser beam so if I’m focused on something you basically have to wave your hands in front of my face to make me pay attention to you.
Funny timing of this topic. Earlier, I was reading instructions as I walked out of my office and apparently someone was talking at me as I read the instructions so I walked out on them mid-sentence. They weren’t please.
Oldest child of two and of 20 cousins here. My brother and several cousins have ADD. I guess being the oldest, and usually in charge, helped train my focusing abilities.
Some of the guys that work for me get nuts if people are talking while we work, I hardly ever notice. However I am very sensitive to temps and get cranky if it is too warm for me.
If I’m trying to read something, I can tune out almost anything except a ringing cell phone. (Almost came to blows over it, too.) I don’t even need quiet to fall asleep, and once I’m asleep – forget about it. I can sleep through almost anything. I like a certain level of background noise while I’m working; I think it gives part of my brain something to attend to while the rest of us are getting the job done.
I’m way to sensitive. I can’t read at all with music on, and I can’t write with talking. The volume on my TV is set to a slight whisper, and it often feels like everyone in the world is yelling all the time.
I spend an inordinate amount of time with a blanket over my head to block out the lights. I’m always turning off lights. I can rarely go outside without sunglasses, lest I get a headache.
Oddly I can sleep through anything, as long as it’s not music, which automatically arrests my attention and renders me unable to function until it stops.
I don’t like bright lights, really loud music, or fidgety or foot-tapping people. I can hear sounds from appliances (that weird refrigerator noise, for example) and sometimes this bothers me, sometimes it doesn’t. I find ordinary sunlight way too bright. I used to do homework while listening to music but I haven’t been able to do it in years.
I was in the same kind of classroom, ivylass, when I was in third grade. I very nearly truly lost my mind. I am hugely sensitive to noise, to the point that the high-pitched whine of a TV going on three rooms away from me is enough to make me cringe. The WryGuy watches COPS and I seriously can’t be in the same end of the house as him when it’s on; even if I’m in the kitchen, I can hear sirens and see the reflection of the flashing lights and I end up gritting my teeth.
I’m also highly sensitive in terms of taste and, smell and touch. A stray hair that falls against my skin under my clothes makes me do the “there’s a spider on me!” dance. Taste-wise I can pick out even trace amounts of certain herbs and spices, I find a lot of sugar bitter rather than sweet, and I can tell if there’s too much salt in something by smell. I can taste the preservatives in store-bought cookies.
Oddly, I prefer strongly-flavored foods (for instance, I love licorice and ginger) and wear a fairly strong fragrance (Opium) and rock concerts don’t bother me. The crowd noise from sports things, though? Yeesh.
We had something very similar here in Maryland. Some of the classrooms were double-size, with a retractable wall. Most of the time the wall was opened, and two large groups of kids would be working in different groups. I can remember doing “centers” where you’d go to a spelling center or a reading center or a math center (in turn) while other small groups rotated around with you. As you completed each “center” you marked it off a sheet of paper.
I can concentrate when it’s noisy and I can usually tune out a lot of distractions.
At work? I teach preschool, and with 20 kids running around, it gets pretty noisy sometimes. Some days I feel like I’m constantly saying, “Inside voices, please!” or “You can be noisy on the playground.”
Certain noises bother me, though. I hate loud gum-chewers, and people who snap their gum really bother me. The ones who make it go pop-pop-pop-pop really bother me.
I hate people who shuffle their shoes. That slap-slap-slap is annoying.
My male cat has suddenly taken to chewing on the lace curtains in the dining room, and it makes the most awful noise. It’s this screechy-shimmy noise that’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Dog barking. Audible chewing. Dog begging for scraps. Dog licking it’s private area. Talkers at movies. Unnecesarily loud car engines. Thumping music. Michael Winner’s voice.
Urge to kill… Rising.
Yes I’m very sensetive to stimuli. Extremely, you might say.
If do many things are going on I retreat and block out everything. I can still concentrate if there is too much stimuli but only on internal things. If I’m trying to take a test or thinking about something, little noises never bother me because I can tune everything out. My wife will sometimes say something three or four times before I realize she’s talking to me if I’m concintrating on something.
Unfortunaly, there is no middle volume level for my brain, I either hear nothing or everything. I have serious trouble interacting with the world if there is too many things going on in my environment. I don’t like lots of different sounds, lights, and most of all things or people bumping into me. Needless to say I hate dance clubs and carnivals with a passion. It’s so stressful on a sensual level, why do be people enjoy them? I have to drink to enjoy parties.
The worst thing of all is that I’m completely unable to hear what people are saying if there is a lot of noise going on. Its not that I can’t hear, I have great hearing, its that my brain can’t seem to decode what’s being said.
I’m more sensitive to things when I’ve gotten enough sleep, so consequently I purposely keep myself from getting more than 6 and half hours of sleep a night. Any more and I’m a complete spazz.
When I’m focused on something, a bomb could go off and I wouldn’t notice. I don’t notice sounds, sights, or even physical things when I’m focused.
I was once interviewing and doing really well. It was only when the interview wrapped up that I realized I’d had my leg crossed the entire hour in such a way that my foot had totally fallen asleep. I went to stand and my leg was useless. I had to quickly think up some additional question while I waited to get some feeling back into it so I wouldn’t just collapse in a heap on the office floor!
I can also fall asleep regardless of the distraction except, like Sven, music. For some reason, I start paying too much attention to the music and can’t relax enough to sleep.
I need it to be very quiet, but not silent (I use a white noise machine or fan) to sleep, but I don’t get distracted by many noises when I’m awake. Talking (almost always women, actually) irritates me a lot when people use a lot of inflection at length- droning voices I can tune out,- fire alarms, high pitched electrial squeals that only one or two other people ever seem to be able to hear at all, and the creeky rocking of chairs-that-aren’t-rocking-chairs-but-can-be-rocked-nonetheless are about the only things that really break my concentration. My high pitch hearing is very good, too good a lot of the time.
I need absolute silence to sleep and am easily distracted by noises.
Also I suffer from flourescent (UV) lights in offices and supermarkets which give me a headache.
I also have problems if something is moving in my peripheral vision, brings on a series of unpleasant feelings.
I have extremely good sense of taste too and any overly strong taste particularly raw garlic or onion can bring on feelings of nausea if not expected.
I wonder are these inbuilt physical responses that are automatic or are they learned responses in which case they ought to respond to some for of behavioural therapy?
Flourescent lights bother me, (they’re a huge migraine trigger) and if they’re “flickering” at all, I can’t concentrate. Sometimes I can hear them buzzing and that will set off a migraine, too.
